The invention relates generally to thermal management systems, and more particularly, to thermal management systems with distributed jet cooling to augment convection heat transfer.
Recent advancements in electronics technology have produced nanometer sized electronic circuits. The resulting advanced electronics, although smaller, have higher heat fluxes. Because thermal real estate has been shrinking, advanced cooling techniques are needed. Cost, size, reliability, and availability have been major constraints.
Natural convection air-cooling is the method of choice for many low power electronics applications due to cost, availability, and reliability. However, its performance is limited due to buoyancy dependent flow. Therefore, there is a need for further enhancement of natural convection, in order to cool modern power electronics. Enhanced natural convection will allow higher heat dissipation and still largely maintain the simplicity of passive cooling.
Synthetic jets are small-scale turbulent jets formed from periodic suction and ejection of the ambient fluid. The jets may impinge upon a heat transfer surface enhancing convection cooling. Likewise, they may flow parallel to a heat transfer surface, also enhancing convection cooling. The small size of these devices, accompanied by a high air velocity, could enable a significant reduction in the size of thermal management hardware for power electronics. Synthetic jets are historically used for boundary layer control applications. However, they have also been shown to augment natural and forced convection heat transfer.
Although studies indicate that heat transfer augmentation is possible using synthetic jets, there is limited data available for the application of synthetic jets to large heat sink surfaces. In addition, new attachment means are needed for reliable attachment of synthetic jets to a chassis. Accordingly, it would be desirable to understand the interaction between main flow and synthetic jet flow and to exploit this interaction to achieve heat transfer enhancement for large heat sink surfaces, such as chassis cooling applications. It would further be desirable to provide reliable attachment means to attach synthetic jets to a chassis.